Shaping my Motherhood

Some nights when the house is finally quiet, I peek into their rooms and watch them breathe. Their chest rise and fall, steady and certain. Something I never felt at their age. The moonlight spills across their blankets, and for a moment, I see my own childhood self, curled there beside them, waiting for a kind of safety that never came. So, I whisper to her too. I tell her she is safe now. That we are breaking the pattern together.

Motherhood is not a mirror; it is a doorway. Through them, I have had to walk back into the parts of myself that I once locked away; the scared, lonely, too-sensitive girl, who never fully felt held. Every time I soothe them through their tears, I am learning to soothe her too.

There are mornings when I am packing their lunches and one of them asks, "Mom. were you like me when you were little?"

I want to say no. To give them a story that does not ache. But honesty has become my promise. So, I tell them, I was shy but brave. That I wanted to be loved for who I was, that I felt everything too deeply. "So...like me" she says smiling, and, I feel something release in my chest. Maybe that is the healing: not erasing the past but turning it into connection.

Motherhood taught me that healing does not always look like forgiveness. Sometimes it looks like presence; showing up, listening, and loving, without the need to fix everything. My daughters are my greatest teachers. Reminding me that the cycle ends every time I choose to stay soft.